Actually, Men Read a LOT of Erotic Fiction too!

On a week when Fifty Shades Freed is smashing box office expectations, we’re hearing a lot of about bored housewives, and women’s penchant for erotic fiction. We’re not sure why it’s acceptable for men to watch porn, but women are castigated for reading erotica, but that aside it seems that that isn’t even the case as it turns out that men read a lot of erotic fiction too!

Research this week from the Canadian company audiobooks.com has shown when it comes to downloads, and audiobooks, men are reading/listening to almost as much erotica as women, and account for around one third of erotica audiobook downloads!

Men now make up a third of the market for erotica, and are also responsible for about one quarter of all audio downloads of the Fifty Shades series. And what’s more, while the entire genre is often judged and looked down on, this study shows that around one in eight users of book and audio download services is reading erotica.

The study also found that the daily commute is the most popular time to listen to audio books, and so if you see a man with headphones on and a faraway look in his eye, maybe he’s reading Fifty Shades of Grey!

What this study really showed is that erotica is not the realms of the bored housewife, thankfully most of us already knew this, but erotica has its place in the literary market and it looks like it’s becoming as popular with men as women.

The top two audiobook downloads for men from the erotica genre, are shown below.

The famed British comedian and actor, Eddie Izzard, recently discovered that he shared the same birthday as the famed novelist Charles Dickens, though the two artists are separated by 150 years. Despite the fact that Izzard struggles with dyslexia, he has recorded an audiobook of Great Expectations and it’s set to be available to download and listen to on June 28 for only 99p on Amazon. Read More

Amazon and its factories and distribution centres have previously come under fire for the way they treat staff, just last week we heard a story about how many ambulances have been called to distribution centres and staff woes and mistreatment has been an ongoing issue.

Now an investigation has brought to light that agency workers making the Amazon’s Echo Smart Speakers and Kindles in China have been hired and paid illegally!Read More

Stats released by the Publishers Association have revealed that audiobook downloads rose 22% last year to an all time record high of £31 million worth of sales. The statistics were released by the Publishers Association to mark the start of Love Audio Week, which runs from 11th to 17th June. Read More

A quick Google search can bring you answers in a matter of moments. Need the recipe for a Shepard’s Pie? No problem. Want to know where the cheapest hotels are in Italy? Here’s a list. The internet has brought endless knowledge to our fingertips, and now a new search engine has been created which can help answer questions that don’t have a definitive answer.

During a TED talk yesterday. author and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil introduced a new search engine called ‘Talk to Books‘, a tool which scans over 100,000 volumes in Google Books and brings users insightful and interesting answers from relevant titles. Read More

It is often thought that, in this digital age of ever advancing technology, children are far more likely to read a book on their tablet screen rather than read from a physical book made of paper. However, recent research has shown that this may not be true.

A study that monitored the reading habits of children in Year 4 and 6, all of whom had access to eReaders such as Kindles and iPads, found that the children tended not to use those devices when it came to reading. In fact, even children who read daily seemed to prefer physical books over digital ones. Read More

Author Joe Hill (Strange Weather), has always had a hankering for the rock star life but the life of an author is far from rock and roll. Instead Hill has decided to come up with some other way of creating his own vinyl LP- by recording an audiobook instead of an album!

The vinyl recording will be narrated by actor Nate Corddry, and will feature a special cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” recorded specifically for the record. The Dark Carousel vinyl package will include original artwork (see below), two colourful special edition records, and a full-length download of the audiobook.

The first vinyl printing of Hill’s Dark Carousel will be for a limited 2,500 copies, and will be out on the 20th of April.

Keep an eye out here at For Reading Addicts for where to pre-order yours.